The Holy Family: What About the Relatives?

Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Holy Family (1670)

Last Sunday, the Gospel reading spoke of Jesus's first visit to Nazareth after he had begun his public ministry. Everyone had heard the reports of his mighty deeds, and yet, when he stood up in his hometown synagogue, the locals seemed to find it all a bit too much to take.

They couldn't understand why their Jesus, whom they'd known as far back as they could remember and had seen day after day, was all of a sudden a big shot. "'Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?' And they took offense at him. Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house'" (Mark 6:3-4).

Eventually, some of these people followed him. They saw by faith that his ministry was rooted in the extraordinary way that he had lived normal life all those years in their midst. They saw this reflected also in his mother Mary, and in Joseph (whom they remembered). Those who overcame the temptation to "take offense" -- who refused to be closed up in their jealousies, their narrowness, or in the cynicism that thinks it has nothing new to learn -- would have wanted to follow him beyond Nazareth, to share in his work of building a greater house.

This passage is significant in so many ways, but I just want to reflect upon the context it reveals. All those years of the "hidden life" at Nazareth were probably a lot more crowded, busy, and noisy than we generally imagine.

It is beautiful to meditate on how the Holy Family encouraged and sustained one another in a profound and vital holiness that also passed through years of uneventful time and ordinary, daily responsibilities. It is also worthwhile, however, to consider what "normal life" actually meant in Nazareth in Palestine, two thousand years ago.

We tend to imagine the Holy Family living in a home pretty much like ours (just like Murillo, above, puts them into an unostentatious but comfortable and spacious 17th century environment). And we often envision them as alone, even perhaps a bit isolated (or at least appearing as such).

But I wonder... perhaps the greatest daily challenge for the Holy Family may have been the not-so-holy extended family and neighbors that they probably ate, drank, worked with, and even slept under the same roof with during all this time. Was not the home in Nazareth and its immediate environment a living space -- awkwardly divided -- and occupied by, basically, everybody? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph... and who else?

Typical Palestinian first century dwellings looked like this.
Everybody all together! (...as this reconstruction illustrates)

Mary's parents, while they were still alive, were close at hand. (It's not like Joachim and Anna would have retired and moved to Florida.) Then there were aunts and uncles and all those cousins who get translated as "adelphi" ("brothers") in the Greek New Testament. Mary and Joseph lived with Jesus and his "kin" -- the whole big, affectionate, bickering, sometimes nosy extended family such as can still be found today in the cultures of the Levant.

The "neighbors" (how did they arrange living space, I wonder?) were probably relatives too. We could try to imagine what work and cooking and all that was like, but what strikes me most is that the Holy Family was surrounded by people whom they were called to love every day.

This is an image that challenges me: Mary and Joseph were contemplatives in the midst of the world. The "hidden life" of Nazareth was in their hearts, as they lived cheek-to-jaw with "the brothers of Jesus" and all the rest of the family and the people who "knew them," living with a mystery that they could not communicate except through love.

We, too, are called to live with Jesus in the midst of so many of our human brothers and sisters who need to come to know Him, to be touched by Him through gestures of love that embrace the familiarity of each day with patience, kindness, simplicity, ardor, and courage.

May the Lord enable us, like the Holy Family, to live as companions of those around us, offering compassion, not fleeing from the ordinary circumstances of life but cherishing them, and building with them a house big enough for all the world.

The Work of Tenderness

We have already completed one third of the year 2014. It has certainly been an eventful time. Here in America, the flowers of spring are finally blooming after what was for many of us a harsh winter. The coming of spring was a certainty, but many events in the world are developing in ways that we cannot predict.

We continue to watch and pray over the dramas of peoples and nations, and we still wonder what will happen in the coming months at the crossroads of Russia and Ukraine. We wonder what kind of contemporary agendas may be taking advantage and imposing themselves upon a situation that could otherwise be resolved. There is the old and complex problem of integration, coexistence, and conflict among Slavic peoples whose historic sufferings are rarely appreciated or understood. But there are also many new factors -- strategic ambitions and concerns, political and economic struggles, disputes over natural resources, the great geopolitical centers of power struggling for dominance, advantage, prestige, or even their own corrupt enrichment.

Many of us feel confused about what exactly is going on, and we don't know how it can be resolved, or who should be involved. We wonder what the ongoing, escalating tension on the steppes of Europe's eastern frontier in May of the year 2014 might mean for the West, for the United States, for our children....

Certainly we have hope that peace will prevail. No one wants to imitate the inexorable march to catastrophe of our ancestors a hundred years ago. No one wants to learn by experience the strange, unforeseeable cruelties of global warfare in a new century. We have enough brutality among ourselves as it is. We have enough need to take responsibility for our own families and communities, to turn to God and to one another, to build up the good, to help one another, to bring healing to the broken, strength to the weak, protection to the vulnerable.

We don't need war. We are already living in the midst of war. Each of us has bruises from the long battle waged within our own minds and hearts, and we also live in a society riddled with open violence, and plagued by so many forces that subtly manipulate and degrade the human person. This is our war, the war that still wounds us and the people around us. We need to draw upon the great sources of healing and mercy that have been given to us, and then care for our brothers and sisters. This is our work. We need to become peacemakers, builders of human places -- places of healing -- in our own communities.

May day is observed as Labor Day in many countries around the world, and the Church marks this day as a feast for St. Joseph the Worker. Every human being is called to be a worker; we are called to engage in the circumstances of our daily lives, called to work in mostly humble ways so that goodness and beauty might flourish and grow. If we give our hearts to God, He will work through us so that we can bring to our fragile human world a much needed tenderness.

In speaking about St. Joseph and his work, Pope Francis emphasized this special quality, and we must beg God to make us tender toward one another and our world if we are to hope for peace:

"Saint Joseph appears as a strong and courageous man, a working man, yet in his heart we see great tenderness, which is not the virtue of the weak but rather a sign of strength of spirit and a capacity for concern, for compassion, for genuine openness to others, for love. We must not be afraid of goodness, of tenderness!" (Pope Francis, March 19, 2013)